The present invention relates to the field of integrated circuit manufacturing wherein numerous steps are carried out while wafer are grouped into batches on wafer-supporting boats.
Those boats must be able to be introduced into processing apparatuses (ovens, reactors, etc.) and have to conform to apparatuses automatically transferring wafer from one boat to another.
It is then essential that the size of the boats be accurate in order than, on the one hand, the wafers are properly positioned in a processing apparatus wherein they are to be inserted and, on the other hand, in such a way that the transfer apparatus does not break wafers when it takes them or lays them down.
Up to now, in order to control those sizes, the wafer manufacturers have simply carried out their manufacturing operations as carefully as possible, manually measuring, individually and independently, various sizes of the manufactured state.
The object of the invention is to provide for an automatic apparatus controlling the size of the wafer-supporting boats.